Brightlingsea One Design

Don’t forget we have Brightlingsea Regatta this weekend.  Key points for BODs are:

Saturday 31 June

All day – lots of stalls, fun and games around the hard and Harbour Square at the marina plus a full programme of events at both Brightlingsea Sailing Club and Colne Yacht Club plus the Volvo Sailing Academy at BSC.

14.00 – Three Creeks Crawl starting from the BSC line.  Its a fantastic fun all in handicap race – more details and info on the course from BSC.

Evening – Colne Yacht Club regatta party with BBQ and dancing to Johnny and His Mates live band.  Tickets available from the CYC bar (or call 01206 302594)

Sunday 1 June

All day – lots of stalls, fun and games around the hard and Harbour Square at the marina plus a full programme of events at both Brightlingsea Sailing Club and Colne Yacht Club.

14.30 – Hickley Tiller starting from Batemans.

The forecast is looking really good with light to moderate breezes, sunshine and warm temperatures and will the public out in big numbers it will be the perfect BOD shop window opportunity as well as a whole lot of fun!  See you all there!

From Class Secretary Jeremy Newman – All available BOD owners and sailors are invited to an informal fleet meeting at the Colne Yacht Club immediately after racing on Sunday 1 June.  There are two items on the Agenda:

1.  The proposed start time change to CYC races put forward by Alan Hicks.  The proposal is to the change the current 14.30 start time to 13.45 for CYC racing.

2. Logistics for the BODs taking part in the Bosham Classic Dinghy Regatta on the 6 and 7 September.  Currently Bob Richardson, Mark White, Fiona Brown, Alan Hicks and Chris Matthews have confirmed their intention to race in this event and any other teams who are interested are also welcome to join in the discussion.

We don’t anticipate the meeting taking very long but we would be most grateful if as many of you as possible can pop into the CYC for the discussions.

David Chivers recently found these wonderful archive photos of BODs racing at Burnham, taken by Trevor Davies.  Does anyone have any idea which year these were taken and can you help identify the boats in the photos? Comment below if you can provide any more info!

This coming weekend its Brightlingsea Town Regatta and the town is really pulling out all the stops for the 2014 edition.  Ashore the regatta is taking over the Waterside Marina’s Harbour Court area which will be filled with lots of interesting stands offering everything from sailing gear and donuts to artwork and handcrafts, and as usual both the CYC and BSC will be fully involved.  Click here for the CYC programme and Click here for the BSC programme.

For the BODs there are races both days.

On Saturday 31 May we have the BSC’s Three Creeks Crawl which will take the massed handicap fleet on a tour of Ray Creek (behind Second Beach) Flag Creek (northern branch of Brightlingsea Creek) and St Osyth Creek (southern branch of Brightlingsea Creek), starting at 14.00 on the BSC line.  With members of the public thronging the Parade, Marina and Hard its going to be a fantastic shop window event so we hope to see as many boats as possible out.

On Sunday 1 June its the CYC’s turn to run the racing for the Hickley Tiller, which starts from Bateman’s at 14.30.  Again the public will be out in force at Bateman’s and along the prom so we have another perfect opportunity to grab people’s attention.

As well as the racing there are lots of fun shore side activities too and if you haven’t already booked your tickets for Saturday evening’s 2 course BBQ and dancing to Johnny and His Mates at the CYC now is the time to do so – tickets are just £17.95 each – book through the CYC office on 01206 302594 or bar!

With the forecast currently promising sunshine, warm spring temperatures and a great breeze in the mid teens we should be in for two fantastic days of sailing and partying.  See you there!

The entry for Pyefleet Week just keeps on growing and with Danny Fox and the Egret crew (aka The Mersea Boys) and the leg-end that is Mr Robert White sailing Sarah Louise, on loan from Jack Wills, now throwing throwing their hats into the ring too, we have 22 boats that we expect will race the whole of Pyefleet Week!  This is a record people…!!!

In addition we have several other teams interested in borrowing boats for the week and we’re hoping to tempt one or two more of our less active owners out onto the water too so 25 boats remains the goal for the President’s Race on Sunday 10 August and possibly even for the whole of Pyefleet Week.

We have already had some enquiries from people keen to sail in a BOD for Pyefleet Week so if you need crew please contact Fi on fiona.brown@fionabrown.com and she can help make the contacts.

Here is the updated list of the 22 boats confirmed so far:

C55 – James Anderson
C54 – Storm Petrel – Alan Hicks
C53 – White Spirit – Mark White
C51 – Grethe – Fi Brown
C32 – Avocet – Jeremy Newman
C31 – Blue Peter – David & Celia Charlton (on loan from Adrian & Judith)
C30 – Sarah Louise – Rob White (on loan from Jack Wills)
C29 – Panic – Bob Richardson + Alistair Burt
C27 – Rebel – Chris Matthews
C26 – Krystina – Richard and Mary White
C25 – White Magic – Brian Walker
C20 – Ruff – Mike Rees/Trevor Stone/Jim Bray
C18 – Gelasma – Mike Hempstead
C16 – Dulcet – Phil Rust
C14 – Aina – Steve Heppell
C11 – Grayling – John Payne
C9 – Bidi – Colin and Dan Willett
C8 – Egret – Danny Fox
C6 – Jumbo Too – Tom Sergeant
C4 – Cormorant – Malcolm Goodwin
C1 – Jean – Barry Newman (on loan from Malcolm)
C?? – Dan King (boat TBC on loan from Nick Readings)

Egret at full pace – Photo courtesy of Nigel Edmunds

Three boats came to the line for the first of the Cormorant Cup races on Sunday 25 May.  After some confusion over the start time Adrian and Judith Gibbons and Tom Quilligan aboard Blue Peter led off the line closely followed by Egret, crewed by Danny Fox, Tim Hearn and Bob Hedger.  Mark White, sailing with Dick Stephens and Jemima Olly in White Spirit, were caught out by the start signal confusion and found themselves having to play catch up.

In a stiff 17-22 knot southerly the boats headed out of the creek on a scalding two sail reach before hardening up for No 8. Egret went left, Blue Peter went right and White Spirit went straight down the middle into the building and favourable ebb tide.  It was a winning move and at No 8 the three boats rounded within a boat length of each other with Egret leading from Blue Peter and White Spirit third.

On the run down to Point Clear the boats had to contend with big swells and made the most of it surfing down the waves and pushing for positions.  At the mark they held their order and set off back up to No 9.

White Spirit took the right side of the beat and about three quarters of the way up the leg they passed a capsized catamaran with a frantic helm, Maddie Anderson, aboard who was clearly in need of assistance.  Further investigation revealed that her crew had become separated from the boat and was being swept out to sea. White Spirit followed the helm’s directions and after about five minutes sailing they were able to find him.  A bit of very nice seamanship saw them retrieve the extremely grateful crew, who was still clutching the cat’s broken tiller in his hand.  Having hauled him on board and checked he was OK the White Spirit boys quickly established that their new crew mate was none other than Finn Anderson who will shortly be one of the regular crew in BOD C55, currently under construction for Finn and Maddie’s father James.  Clearly Finn was taking desperate measures to get a closer look at the opposition’s deck layout!

While White Spirit was in international rescue mode the other BODs were enjoying what could best be described as a lively race! From the deck of Blue Peter we are reliably informed by Tom that Danny revealed his thankfully clean bottom to the fleet.  The incident occurred on the Gybe at Mersea Wreck when things didn’t go entirely to plan aboard Egret and Tim found himself having to throw a leg over the upper gunwhale to bring the boat back onto an even keel!  No one was more surprised than Danny that boat actually came back upright!

Despite the near swim Egret managed to stay ahead of Blue Peter and crossed the line just a few seconds ahead.  White Spirit meanwhile had put Finn back aboard his cat but was so far behind that they retired to put in a claim for redress.

In our earlier post we announced that this Sunday’s Cormorant Cup 1 race is to start from the BSC line at 14.10 as stated on the BOD Programme.  On checking the BSC Calendar we have established that this is incorrect.  THE CORRECT TIME FOR THE CORMORANT CUP 1 IS 11.12am ON SUNDAY 25 MAY.

Our apologies for any confusion this may have caused.  We will ask for the rest of the BOD programme to be cross checked to ensure that there are no further conflicts coming up.

Fi just did a very quick informal add up and it looks like we will definitely be over 20 boats for Pyefleet Week and the President’s Race this year. Here are the 20 boats we are already pretty sure will be racing with us:

C55 – James Anderson
C54 – Storm Petrel – Alan Hicks
C53 – White Spirit – Mark White
C51 – Grethe – Fi Brown
C32 – Avocet – Jeremy Newman
C31 – Blue Peter – David & Celia Charlton (on loan from Adrian & Judith)
C29 – Panic – Bob Richardson + Alistair Burt
C27 – Rebel – Chris Matthews
C26 – Krystina – Richard and Mary White
C25 – White Magic – Brian Walker
C20 – Ruff – Mike Rees/Trevor Stone/Jim Bray
C18 – Gelasma – Mike Hempstead
C16 – Dulcet – Phil Rust
C14 – Aina – Steve Heppell
C11 – Grayling – John Payne
C9 – Bidi – Colin and Dan Willett
C6 – Jumbo Too – Tom Sergeant
C4 – Cormorant – Malcolm Goodwin
C1 – Jean – Barry Newman (on loan from Malcolm)
C?? – Dan King (boat TBC on loan from Nick Readings)

Simon Hipkin has been in touch to let us know that the construction of C55 is moving ahead on schedule and he anticipates delivering the boat to James Anderson before the end of June.

Simon tells us that he has been able to incorporate some of the lessons learned during the building of C54 and this has helped him to simplify and speed up some elements of the process.

As you can see from his photo gallery below the deck beams are in and the deck is now in place and it won’t be long before he starts the painting and varnishing process.  Once that is complete it will be all go on the fittings and she will be on her way to James.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend is upon us and with it comes the first of the Cormorant Cup races which starts from the BSC line at 11.00 (not 14.10 as previously stated) on Sunday 25 May. The forecast for Sunday is looking quite promising with plenty of sunshine and a nice southerly breeze in the mid to upper teens.

With luck we will have approaching 10 boats on the water so get out there and join in the fun.  If anyone needs any help getting themselves afloat for this weekend just give Fi a shout on 07711 718470 and she’ll do her best to assist.